Memoirs of a Geisha transports readers to a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. Through the eyes of one of Japan's most celebrated geishas, we experience the struggle for dignity and identity in a time of war and transformation. Arthur Golden crafts a tale that is at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful—and utterly unforgettable.

In this classic novel of two willful lovers caught in a breathless adventure of deception and betrayal, #1 New York Times bestselling author Judith McNaught has created a powerful and unforgettable masterpiece.

ELIZABETH CAMERON
The Countess of Havenhurst possessed a rare gentleness and fierce courage to match her exquisite beauty. But her reputation is shattered when she is discovered in the arms of Ian Thornton, a notorious gambler and social outcast.

IAN THORNTON
A dangerously handsome man of secret wealth and mysterious lineage, his voyage to Elizabeth's heart is fraught with intrigue, scandal, and a venomous revenge.

Destined for each other, yet wary of each other's motives, Elizabeth and Ian engage in a dance of suspicion and passion that tests the very soul of their star-crossed love. As a twisting path of secrets takes them from London's drawing rooms to the mysterious Scottish Highlands, Elizabeth must learn the truth: is Ian merely a ruthless fortune hunter at heart?

Published to international critical and popular acclaim, this intensely romantic yet stunningly realistic novel spans three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the present. As the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenches of No Man's Land, Sebastian Faulks creates a world of fiction that is as tragic as A Farewell to Arms and as sensuous as The English Patient. Crafted from the ruins of war and the indestructibility of love, Birdsong is a novel that will be read and marveled at for years to come.

Dating both a vampire and a werewolf isn't easy. But just to complicate Anita's already messy life, someone has put a price on her head. Love cannot save her this time, so she turns to Edward, hitman extraordinaire, for help. But finding the person behind the threat won't be easy, because as both a vampire hunter and zombie reanimator, Anita has made a lot of enemies-both human and otherwise.

Though she’s dating a vampire and a werewolf, Anita is keeping them at arm’s length. Which isn’t easy considering that Jean-Claude is the master vampire of St. Louis and Richard Zeeman is the sexiest junior high school teacher she’s ever seen. Just to complicate Anita’s already messy life, someone has put a price on her head. Love cannot save her this time, so she turns to Edward, hitman extraordinaire for help. But finding the person behind it won’t be easy, because she’s made a lot of enemies—human and otherwise.

Cold Mountain is a novel about a soldier’s perilous journey back to his beloved near the Civil War's end. At once a love story and a harrowing account of one man’s long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a new talent in American literature.

Based on local history and family stories passed down by Frazier’s great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war and back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. His odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada’s struggle to revive her father’s farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman and Ada confront the vastly transformed world they’ve been delivered.

Frazier reveals insight into human relations with the land and the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great 19th-century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks to our time.

California’s gold country, 1850. A time when men sold their souls for a bag of gold and women sold their bodies for a place to sleep. Angel expects nothing from men but betrayal. Sold into prostitution as a child, she survives by keeping her hatred alive. And what she hates most are the men who use her, leaving her empty and dead inside.

Then she meets Michael Hosea, a man who seeks his Father’s heart in everything. Michael obeys God’s call to marry Angel and to love her unconditionally. Slowly, day by day, he defies Angel’s every bitter expectation, until despite her resistance, her frozen heart begins to thaw. But with her unexpected softening comes overwhelming feelings of unworthiness and fear. And so Angel runs. Back to the darkness, away from her husband’s pursuing love, terrified of the truth she no longer can deny: her final healing must come from the One who loves her even more than Michael does . . . the One who will never let her go.

A powerful retelling of the story of Gomer and Hosea, Redeeming Love is a life-changing story of God’s unconditional, redemptive, all-consuming love.

Ella Enchanted is a charming reimagining of the classic Cinderella tale with a twist. The protagonist, Ella, is not your typical damsel in distress; she's a feisty young girl who has been burdened with a curse of obedience. This curse, bestowed upon her at birth by the well-meaning but misguided fairy Lucinda, compels Ella to follow any command given to her, no matter how absurd or dangerous.

After the death of her beloved mother, Ella's life takes a turn for the worse as she finds herself at the mercy of a greedy father, a malicious stepmother, and two scheming stepsisters. Despite the odds stacked against her, Ella's wit and rebellious spirit never waver. She embarks on an adventurous quest for freedom and self-discovery, determined to find Lucinda and break the curse that binds her.

Throughout her journey, Ella encounters ogres, befriends elves, and even falls in love with a prince. But this is no ordinary fairy tale romance; Ella's relationship with the prince is built on mutual respect and a shared sense of humor, and it's ultimately Ella who comes to his rescue. Gail Carson Levine delivers a story that not only entertains but also challenges traditional female roles in fairy tales, offering readers a tale of ambition, verve, and the power of self-reliance.

Doctor Zhivago is an epic tale that explores the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family. The story is centered on Dr. Yury Zhivago, who is not only a physician but also a poet and philosopher. His life is deeply disrupted by the war and his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary.

Yury's artistic nature renders him particularly vulnerable to the brutality and harshness that follow in the wake of the Bolsheviks' rise to power. Within the novel, the poems written by Yury are a testament to some of the most beautiful writing the book has to offer. His experiences and the challenges he faces are a reflection of the turmoil that grips the society around him.

The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countryside. Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.

In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton's other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read book.

A magnificent romantic/historical/adventure novel set in India at the time of mutiny. The Far Pavilions is a story of 19th Century India, when the thin patina of English rule held down dangerously turbulent undercurrents. It is a story about an English man - Ashton Pelham-Martyn - brought up as a Hindu and his passionate, but dangerous love for an Indian princess. It's a story of divided loyalties, of tender camaraderie, of greedy imperialism and of the clash between east and west.

To the burning plains and snow-capped mountains of this great, humming continent, M.M. Kaye brings her quite exceptional gift of immediacy and meticulous historical accuracy, plus her insight into the human heart.

Archaeologist Verity Grey has been drawn to the dark legends of the Scottish Borderlands in search of the truth buried in a rocky field by the sea. In this darkly romantic novel of historical fiction by bestselling author Susanna Kearsley, Verity may find more than she bargained for.

The invincible ninth Roman Legion marches from York to fight the Northern tribes and then vanishes from the pages of history. When Verity goes looking for them in modern-day Scotland, her eccentric boss is convinced he's finally found the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion—not because of any scientific evidence, but because a local boy has "seen" a Roman soldier walking in the fields, a ghostly sentinel who guards the bodies of his long-dead comrades.

Here on the windswept Scottish shores, Verity may find the answer to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the historical record. Or she may uncover secrets from the romantic past that were buried for a reason. Fans of historical romance will be completely transported by The Shadowy Horses, an exquisite novel of Scottish historical fiction.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of William Shakespeare's most enchanting comedies. The story revolves around the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, who are manipulated by the fairies inhabiting the forest in which most of the play is set.

The play opens with Hermia, who is in love with Lysander, facing an arranged marriage to Demetrius, whom her friend Helena loves. Hermia and Lysander plan to escape Athens to avoid the marriage decree by Hermia's father. Meanwhile, in the forest, the King and Queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania, are in the midst of a quarrel.

Oberon's mischievous servant, Puck, is sent to fetch a magical flower, the juice of which can cause one to fall in love with the first creature they see upon waking. Chaos ensues as Puck's love potion causes unintended love triangles and mistaken identities. Additionally, a group of laborers are rehearsing a play for the upcoming wedding of the Duke of Athens, and Puck's interference leads to further comedic outcomes, including one actor, Bottom, being transformed into a donkey and becoming the object of the enchanted Titania's affections.

The play masterfully blends elements of love, humor, and magic, culminating in a delightful tale that continues to be celebrated and performed around the world.

Fight Club follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.

In this novel, Chuck Palahniuk offers a dark and provocative look into the depths of the human psyche, delivering a tale that is as unsettling as it is compelling. With biting satire and a unique voice, Fight Club has become a modern classic, exploring themes of identity, consumerism, and the search for meaning in a contemporary world.

Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawford's arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation.

Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.

Nobel Prize recipient Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer's masterpiece, a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan.

At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages, a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path. In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered. And a mother's quest begins - to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain. It is an odyssey that will bring her to... THE HORSE WHISPERER

He is the stuff of legend. His voice can calm wild horses and his touch heal broken spirits. For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubled ears, such men were once called Whisperers. Now Tom Booker, the inheritor of this ancient gift, is to meet his greatest challenge.

Annie Graves has traveled across a continent with her daughter, Grace, and their wounded horse, Pilgrim, to the Booker ranch in Montana. Annie has risked everything - her career, her marriage, her comfortable life - in her desperate belief that the Whisperer can help them. The accident has turned Pilgrim savage. He is now so demented and dangerous that everyone says he should be destroyed. But Annie won't give up on him. For she feels his fate is inextricably entwined with that of her daughter, who has retreated into a heartrending, hostile silence. Annie knows that if the horse dies, something in Grace will die too.

In the weeks to come, under the massive sky of the Rocky Mountain Front, all their lives - including Tom Booker's - will be transformed forever in a way none could have foretold. At once an epic love story and a gripping adventure, The Horse Whisperer weaves an extraordinary tale of healing and redemption - a magnificent emotional journey that explores our ancient bonds with earth and sky and hearts untamed. It is a stirring elegy to the power of belief and self-discovery, to hopes lost and found again.

A sensational bestseller when it appeared in 1986, The Garden of Eden is the last uncompleted novel of Ernest Hemingway, which he worked on intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1961. Set on the Côte d'Azur in the 1920s, it is the story of a young American writer, David Bourne, his glamorous wife, Catherine, and the dangerous, erotic game they play when they fall in love with the same woman.

A lean, sensuous narrative...taut, chic, and strangely contemporary, The Garden of Eden represents vintage Hemingway, the master "doing what nobody did better" (R. Z. Sheppard, Time).

The Bridges of Madison County tells the story of Robert Kincaid, the photographer and free spirit searching for the covered bridges of Madison County, and Francesca Johnson, the farm wife waiting for the fulfillment of a girlhood dream. This novel gives voice to the longings of men and women everywhere-and shows us what it is to love and be loved so intensely that life is never the same again.

Tender Is the Night is a modern classic, restored by Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III and featuring a personal foreword by Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter Blake Hazard and a new introduction by bestselling Amor Towles. Set in the south of France in the late 1920s, it is the tragic tale of a young actress, Rosemary Hoyt, and her complicated relationship with the alluring American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth pushed him into a glamorous lifestyle, and whose growing strength highlights Dick’s decline. Lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked-about books of the year when it was originally published in 1934, and is even more beloved by readers today.

The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction’s most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers’s work, praising her “great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail.”

The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.

Margaret Mary, the eldest Concannon sister, is a glass artist with an independent streak as fierce as her volatile temper. Hand-blowing glass is a difficult and exacting art, and while she may produce the delicate and the fragile, Maggie is a strong and opinionated woman, a Clare woman, with all the turbulence of that fascinating west country.

One man, Dublin gallery owner Rogan Sweeney, has seen the soul in Maggie's art, and vows to help her build a career. When he comes to Maggie's studio, her heart is inflamed by their fierce attraction—and her scarred past is slowly healed by love.

Rurouni Kenshin is one of the most beloved and popular manga series worldwide. Set against the backdrop of the Meiji Restoration, it tells the saga of Himura Kenshin, once an assassin of ferocious power, now a humble rurouni, a wandering swordsman fighting to protect the honor of those in need.

A hundred and fifty years ago in Kyoto, amid the flames of revolution, there arose a warrior, an assassin of such ferocious power he was given the title Hitokiri: Manslayer. With his bloodstained blade, Hitokiri Battosai helped close the turbulent Bakumatsu period and end the reign of the shoguns, slashing open the way toward the progressive Meiji Era. Then he vanished, and with the flow of years became legend.

In the 11th year of Meiji, in the middle of Tokyo, the tale begins. Himura Kenshin, a humble rurouni, or wandering swordsman, comes to the aid of Kamiya Kaoru, a young woman struggling to defend her father's school of swordsmanship against attacks by the infamous Hitokiri Battosai. But neither Kenshin nor Battosai are quite what they seem...

Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a living as a stonemason at Christminster; there he falls in love with his independent-minded cousin, Sue Bridehead. Out of a sense of obligation, Sue marries the schoolmaster Phillotson, who has helped her. Unable to bear living with Phillotson, she returns to live with Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock. Their poverty and the weight of society's disapproval begin to take a toll on Sue and Jude; the climax occurs when Jude's son by Arabella hangs Sue and Jude's children and himself. In penance, Sue returns to Phillotson and the church. Jude returns to Arabella and eventually dies miserably.

The novel's sexual frankness shocked the public, as did Hardy's criticisms of marriage, the university system, and the church. Hardy was so distressed by its reception that he wrote no more fiction, concentrating solely on his poetry.

Throughout a single day in 1892, John Shawnessy recalls the great moments of his life—from the love affairs of his youth in Indiana, to the battles of the Civil War, to the politics of the Gilded Age, to his homecoming as schoolteacher, husband, and father. Shawnessy is the epitome of the place and period in which he lives, a rural land of springlike women, shady gamblers, wandering vagabonds, and soapbox orators.

Yet here on the banks of the Shawmucky River, which weaves its primitive course through Raintree County, Indiana, he also feels and obeys ancient rhythms. A powerful novel, Raintree County is a compelling vision of 19th-century America with timeless resonance.

This volume contains the six major novels by Jane Austen, which are:

• Emma
• Mansfield Park
• Northanger Abbey
• Persuasion
• Sense and Sensibility
• Pride and Prejudice

In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people—Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs—were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.

It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war.

Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.

What if a woman who knows nothing about sports inherits a professional football team? The Windy City definitely isn't ready for Phoebe Somerville, the outrageous, curvaceous New York knockout who's taking over their hometown team. And Phoebe is definitely not prepared for the Stars' head coach Dan Calebow, a sexist jock taskmaster with a one-track mind.

Calebow is everything Phoebe abhors. And the sexy boss is everything Dan despises - a meddling bimbo who doesn't know a pigskin from a pitcher's mound. So why is he drawn to the shameless sexpot like a heat-seeking missile? And why does the coach's good ol' boy charm leave cosmopolitan Phoebe feeling awkward, tongue-tied...and ready to fight?

The mismatched pair spark fireworks of all sorts in this sexy, heartwarming, and hilarious story of two stubborn people who believe in playing for keeps.

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.

Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.

Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.

The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. At once a love story and a philosophical meditation.

With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.

Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find—through love or through exacting maternal appraisal—a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud. In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers' final union in death seems almost inevitable.

And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.

"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..." This is a record of hate far more than of love, writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles. Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet as he delves deeper into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to recognize.

Paradise, the first book in the Second Opportunities series, is a tale of love, betrayal, and redemption. It follows the story of corporate raider Matthew Farrell, who has transformed from a poor, scruffy kid from Indiana's steel mills into a powerful figure courted by world leaders and closely watched by the media. Matthew is prepared to move in on the Bancroft empire, a legendary department store chain.

Meredith Bancroft, a cool and composed executive in her family's business, once defied her father to marry the intensely magnetic Matt Farrell, leading to a short-lived and disastrous marriage. Now, with the Bancroft firm facing a hostile takeover, Meredith must face Matt once again. As the tension between them escalates, they are haunted by memories that are both sweet and painful. Suspicion and restlessness grow, and they are left wondering if they can trust each other and seize the chance at a tender miracle that lies before them.

Animals dream about the things they do in the day time just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life. So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life. Blending flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments. With this work, the acclaimed author of The Bean Trees and Homeland and Other Stories sustains her familiar voice while giving readers her most remarkable book yet.

Outlander, a novel by Diana Gabaldon, offers an unrivaled blend of storytelling and unforgettable characters, set against a richly detailed historical backdrop. The story begins in the Scottish Highlands in 1945, where Claire Randall, a former British combat nurse, is reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon. However, her life takes an unexpected turn when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles and is transported back in time to 1743.

Suddenly, Claire becomes an outlander in a Scotland embroiled in war and clan raids. Amidst the dangers, her only chance of safety lies in the hands of Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. As Claire navigates this new world, she faces a torn existence between her fidelity to her husband and the compelling attraction to Jamie. This spellbinding novel weaves together adventure, passion, and history, resulting in a love story that transcends time itself.

Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. It is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat.

This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.

Spain. A land of eternal passion and unceasing bloodshed. From the vengeance of a pitiless tyrant, four women flee the sacred, once-safe walls of a convent: LUCIA, the proud survivor harboring a murderous secret from the savage clan wars of Sicily...GRACIELLA, the beauty still unpurged of guilt from one reckless, youthful sin...MEGAN, the orphan seeking perilous refuge in the arms of a defiant Basque rebel...and TERESA, the believer haunted by a faith that mocks her with silence. Leaving innocence but not hope behind, they venture into an alien, dazzling world, where each will encounter an unexpected destiny -- and the truth about herself.

When four nuns are forced to flee their Spanish convent in 1976 to face a hostile world, they find themselves pawns in a violent struggle between the outlawed Basque underground movement and the Spanish army under the command of Colonel Ramon Acoca, who is bent on destroying them all.

Like Water for Chocolate weaves an enchanting tale set in turn-of-the-century Mexico, capturing the essence of family life with a touch of magical realism. This novel became an international best-selling phenomenon, celebrated for its rich blend of romance and bittersweet humor, complete with mouthwatering recipes.

The story follows the all-female De La Garza family, focusing on the youngest daughter, Tita, who is bound by tradition to remain unmarried and care for her mother. Trapped by this fate, Tita's only solace comes from her love for cooking. Her world is turned upside down when she falls in love with Pedro, who, in a twist of desperation, marries Tita's sister Rosaura to stay close to her. Amidst a backdrop of family tensions and societal expectations, Tita and Pedro must navigate their unfulfilled passion, hoping for a chance to be together against all odds.

Through a series of tragic events and twists of fate, the novel explores the themes of love, loss, and the transformative power of food, making it a sumptuous and captivating read.

Ramses the Great has reawakened in opulent Edwardian London. Having drunk the elixir of life, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hungers that can never be satisfied. He becomes the close companion of a voluptuous heiress, Julie Stratford, but his cursed past again propels him toward disaster. He is tormented by searing memories of his last reawakening, at the behest of Cleopatra, his beloved queen of Egypt. And his intense longing for her, undiminished over the centuries, will force him to commit an act that will place everyone around him in the gravest danger.

An unforgettable story of courage and romance. Will Valancy Stirling ever escape her strict family and find true love?

Valancy Stirling is 29, unmarried, and has never been in love. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she finds her only consolation in the "forbidden" books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle--a place where all her dreams come true and she can be who she truly wants to be. After getting shocking news from the doctor, she rebels against her family and discovers a surprising new world, full of love and adventures far beyond her most secret dreams.

Lioness Rampant is the final installment in Tamora Pierce's celebrated Song of the Lioness quartet, which has been honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award. Alanna of Trebond has achieved her dream of becoming the first female knight errant, but she finds herself at a crossroads, uncertain of what her next step should be. Despite her legendary triumphs in countless battles, Alanna realizes that there might be more she needs beyond the life of a knight errant.

However, Alanna's reflections are put on hold when she faces an impossible challenge. She must secure the Dominion Jewel, a gem of legendary power that can bring great good when wielded by the right hands. But time is of the essence, as the kingdom of Tortall faces grave threats from all sides. Enemies, both powerful and petty, are conspiring to destroy everything and everyone that Alanna holds dear.

As Alanna embarks on this perilous quest, she discovers that her future is indeed as epic as her past, both as a formidable warrior and as a woman forging her own path.

Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for twenty-eight years—and it shows: in their quarrels, in their routines, in their ability to tolerate with affection each other’s eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an irrepressible optimist, wants nothing more than to fix her son’s broken marriage. Ira is infuriatingly practical, a man “who should have married Ann Landers.”

What begins as a day trip to a funeral becomes an adventure in the unexpected. As Maggie and Ira navigate the riotous twists and turns, they intersect with an assorted cast of eccentrics—and rediscover the magic of the road called life and the joy of having somebody next to you to share the ride . . . bumps and all.

The plot of Washington Square has the simplicity of old-fashioned melodrama: a plain-looking, good-hearted young woman, the only child of a rich widower, is pursued by a charming but unscrupulous man who seeks the wealth she will presumably inherit. On this premise, Henry James constructed one of his most memorable novels, a story in which love is answered with betrayal and loyalty leads inexorably to despair.

In Washington Square (1880), Henry James reminisces about the New York he had known thirty years before as he tells the story of Catherine Sloper and her fortune-seeking suitor Morris Townsend. This perceptively drawn human drama is James' most accessible work and an enduring literary triumph.

This classic historical romance from New York Times bestselling author Julie Garwood follows a beautiful lady in need of rescue from a knight in shining armor—but gets an alpha warrior instead. In the feuding English court, gentle Lady Madelyne suffered the cruel whims of her ruthless brother, Baron Louddon. Then, in vengeance for a bitter crime, Baron Duncan of Wexton—the Wolf—unleashed his warriors against Louddon. Exquisite Madelyne was the prize he captured...but when he gazed upon the proud beauty, he pledged to protect her with his life.

In his rough-hewn castle, Duncan proved true to his honor. But when at last their noble passion conquered them both, she surrendered with all her soul. Now, for love, Madelyne would stand fast...as bravely as her Lord, the powerful Wolf who fought for...Honor’s Splendour.

A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, Norwegian Wood blends the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man’s hopeless and heroic first love.

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. 

Once and Always, one of Judith McNaught's most masterful and moving love stories, powerfully brings to life the fiery passion of a free-spirited American beauty and a troubled English lord.

Suddenly orphaned and alone, Victoria Seaton sails the vast ocean, eager to reclaim her heritage at Wakefield, the sumptuous English estate of a distant cousin, the notorious Lord Jason Fielding. Bewildered by his arrogance yet drawn to his panther-like grace, she senses the painful memories that smolder in his eyes. When he gathers her at last into his arms, arousing a sweet, insistent hunger, they wed and are embraced by fierce, consuming joy -- free from the past's cruel grasp. Then, in a moment of anguish, Victoria discovers the treachery at the heart of their love... a love she had dreamed would triumph not just once, but always.